you simply can't withdraw $500 billion worth of spending from the u.s. economy by raising taxes and cutting government spending at the same time. that's more than 2% of gdp, and the economy is only growing at 2%. it's an absurd thing to try to do. more than that, though, i want you to recognize that the kind of deal that they seem to be cooking up in the clouds, namely cutting taxes -- raising taxes by 150 billion and boehner getting his way, cutting spending by $150 billion, that's $300 billion, that's a lot of negative stimulus also. it might not be 500 but 300 is a locality. >> i think steve said something about a gradual slope ned of a cliff. the cataclysmic that he was talking about. initially those kinds of tax increases don't kick in until much later. they're now talking about pushing back spend cuts as well. look, peter is right. we're looking at fiscal contraction next year, and it gets back to the first set of comments. that's not what you want to see about an economy growing around 2% with a highly elevated employment rate. let's not forget ab